


Our Unconventional Courtship

by vaskianmountains



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Auguste (Captive Prince) Lives, Damen fails at subtlety, First Meetings, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Prank Wars, awful first meeting, pranking as flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22282285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaskianmountains/pseuds/vaskianmountains
Summary: When Damen finds Auguste in the grocery store, he decides that this is the perfect moment to get back at him for the prank he pulled on Damen. Everything goes exactly as Damen planned. Everything except for the fact that the person whose shoes are now covered in raw eggs wasn’t Auguste at all, and that instead Damen now finds himself staring at the most beautiful man he has ever seen. He doesn’t know yet that the man turns out to be Auguste’s little brother Laurent, nor that this will be the beginning of a prank war between them that partially serves to disguise their flirting.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 214





	Our Unconventional Courtship

**Author's Note:**

> This is also posted on my tumblr [@vaskianmountains](https://vaskianmountains.tumblr.com/) in three parts: [part 1](https://vaskianmountains.tumblr.com/post/190221004394/), [part 2](https://vaskianmountains.tumblr.com/post/190276578154/), [part 3](https://vaskianmountains.tumblr.com/post/190294763969/)

_One_

“Hey, asshole!” Damen said as he roughly elbowed Auguste in the side.

He was doing groceries and had found Auguste standing in one of the aisles, unsuspecting of Damen’s presence, and grabbing a carton of eggs off the shelf. Auguste dropped the eggs as Damen’s elbow made contact, and as they hit the ground and broke, raw egg stained his shoes. Just as Damen had been hoping.

“I don’t think it’s me who’s the asshole here,” Auguste rounded on Damen.

Except it wasn’t Auguste.

The blond man was wearing the same jacket Auguste owned, but he was shorter and his shoulders were less broad. And while Auguste was certainly handsome, standing before Damen right now was the most beautiful man he had ever seen.

“I can understand that a brute like you wouldn’t know that insulting strangers in a grocery aisle and physically assaulting them is considered uncouth behavior, but I would think that at least your parents would have taught you that staring is rude.”

The man looked like an angel. An angel of wrath who had come to judge humanity for its sins.

“Now pick your jaw up off the ground, or you might get egg on it.”

“I—I am so sorry,” Damen stammered. “I didn’t mean to—”

“If you didn’t mean to,” the man interrupted him, “you might have thought of that earlier. Although, I suppose that expecting forethought of some people is simply asking for too much.”

“I really am sorry,” Damen tried again. “I thought you were my friend Auguste. He pulled a prank on me yesterday, and I wanted to get back at him.”

“Yes,” the man said, “I’m sure that’s it.” He picked up a new carton of eggs and put it in his cart. “Now run along, and find an employee so you can tell them you made a mess and would like to clean it up for them.”

Damen had never wanted to sink into the ground and disappear so much. When the man started walking away, Damen called out to him, apologizing one more time, “I’m sorry!”

* * *

A few days after Damen’s disastrous shopping trip, he was sitting in Auguste’s living room. He still hadn’t paid Auguste back for the prank he’d pulled on Damen, but he had vowed to be more careful than he was at the grocery store. Auguste’s little brother Laurent was starting his master’s program at the University of Marlas this semester and had moved in with Auguste last week, and Damen didn’t want to accidentally have his prank land on the wrong person again.

“Here’s your coffee,” Auguste said as he handed Damen a mug.

“Thanks.” He blew over his coffee to cool it down and took a sip.

Only to spit it right back out again.

“You put salt in my coffee?!” Damen rounded on Auguste. “That’s not fair! I still haven’t paid you back for last time. You don’t get to prank me two times in a row.”

“That wasn’t Auguste.”

Damen turned around. Walking into the living room from the kitchen was the beautiful man from the grocery store who, Damen now realized, must have been Auguste’s little brother.

* * *

_Two_

“Are you sure about this?” Damen asked.

“What’s the matter?” Auguste responded. “I’ve never known you to get cold feet over a prank.”

“It’s just—I’m pretty sure Laurent already hates me and I don’t want to make it worse.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Auguste scoffed. “Anyway, he put salt in your coffee and unboiled eggs in my shoes, and now we’re going to get back at him. Besides, he’s only going to be delighted that he’s going to have an excuse to prank us again after this. It’s the game he likes. Well, as long as it doesn’t impede on his schoolwork, anyway. Now, start helping me with blowing up some of these balloons. Laurent is going to get home in an hour and we need to be done by then.”

Damen wasn’t sure whether he believed Auguste. He had tried to be subtle—and he was fairly confident that Laurent hadn’t noticed anything aside from perhaps their first encounter at the grocery store—but Auguste, who had known Damen for years and had witnessed him falling in love plenty of times, couldn’t have missed the signs of Damen’s attraction to Laurent. Auguste had always been protective of Laurent, Damen knew so from all of the stories Auguste had told him of their childhood, and right now he couldn’t be certain whether this might not just be Auguste’s way of trying to ruin any chance Damen might have had with his little brother.

Even so, Damen opened another packet of balloons and started to help Auguste. If this did end up going wrong, he might still be able to convince Laurent that Auguste had forced Damen to participate.

* * *

“Does the brute visit every day?” Laurent asked when he came home and found Damen and Auguste sitting on the couch playing video games.

“The brute has a name,” Damen said.

“The brute can talk. Truly, I’m shocked. It’s too bad, though, that he can’t speak in first person or at the very least use his own name.”

Damen was certain that Nikandros, and Auguste too if Laurent wasn’t his little brother, would declare him a masochist, but Damen couldn’t help but be pleased whenever Laurent mockingly insulted him. “I, Damianos, haven’t even been here every day this past week.” Although, Damen had to admit to himself, it had cost him some difficulty to not rush over to the brothers’ apartment everyday in hope of seeing Laurent, and he had actually only succeeded in not coming over one day out of the five since he had known Laurent.

“It certainly feels like you’re here everyday,” Laurent said. “I’d almost think I moved in with two brutes, rather than only my brother.”

“Hey!” Auguste interrupted them. “Since when am I a brute?”

“Well,” Laurent said, “you are the company you keep, are you not?”

In his shock, Auguste let his character die.

Damen’s own had already died when Laurent had come home and all of his attention had been diverted. He started up a new gameplay, held up his controller to Laurent, and asked hopefully, “Do you want to join us?”

“I have to study,” Laurent said. “Besides, I might live with two brutes now, but if I also start hanging out with you, people may start thinking I’m also one myself. My reputation won’t be able to take that.”

Damen couldn’t stop himself. “What?” He asked. “Is it that fragile?”

“Shut up,” Laurent said and turned away to his bedroom. Damen had noted the smile playing on his lips, though, and he felt a rush of euphoria move through him. At this stage, he wouldn’t be surprised if he became addicted to Laurent’s smile.

Not even a minute after Laurent had disappeared, they heard him scream.

Auguste burst out into laughter.

Damen himself felt slightly sick and wondered whether this would be the part where Laurent would start to genuinely hate him.

“There are spiders!” Laurent shrieked as he burst in on Damen and Auguste again, “In my room!” He turned to his brother. “You are removing them right now!”

“They’re only pieces of plastic, Laurent,” Auguste said.

“They are still shaped like spiders and I am not touching them!”

Tears were sliding down Auguste’s cheeks by now.

“I can’t believe my own brother would do this to me.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Auguste said when he managed to reign in his laughter enough to speak. “Damen was there too.”

Damen lifted his arms in surrender when Laurent turned to him. “I only helped with the balloons Auguste used to hide the spiders.”

“That still makes you complicit,” Laurent said. “The only thing you have going for yourself is that you at least don’t seem to find any mirth in my suffering unlike my brother.”

“I can remove them for you,” Damen offered. He didn’t like real spiders either, but didn’t mind the fake toy spiders Auguste had spread throughout Laurent’s room.

Laurent turned to Auguste, “I’m starting to think that it’s you who was the brute all along, and that you simply rubbed it off on Damen.”

Damen followed Laurent into his room. At his desk, he moved aside the balloons and picked up the plastic toy spiders. Laurent looked on with suspicion. When he had all of them removed from the desk, he turned to Laurent’s bed.

“They are in my bed too?!” Laurent screamed. “How am I supposed to sleep there tonight?”

“Don’t worry, Laurent,” Auguste said from the door opening. “I’m sure that in order to make it up to you, Damen would gladly share his own bed with you.”

* * *

_Three_

It had been more than a month since Damen had first met Laurent, and their first pranks had now become the beginning of a full prank war. Damen couldn’t help but be delighted every time Laurent pranked him. And every time he retaliated back against Laurent, he was filled with nervous excitement that gave way to giddy amazement when Laurent seemed to like him more and more after each prank.

Laurent had put blank tape around Damen’s tap two days ago, and when Damen had turned it on he had gotten completely soaked from the water spraying on him. So right now, it was Damen’s turn to prank Laurent again.

However, this time he was even more nervous than normally as he attempted to redo (though with a slight alteration) his first prank on Laurent that hadn’t been an accident in a grocery store. He took a deep breath as he carefully hid the card on Laurent’s pillow with heart-shaped balloons.

Now, all he could do was hope for the best.

* * *

Later that day, Damen’s phone pinged with a text from Laurent.

> **Laurent:** Is that a genuine offer?

> **Damen:** It is if you want it to be

> **Damen:** if you don’t, then we can pretend that it was another prank and continue like before

> **Laurent:** No

> **Laurent:** I would like it very much to go out on a date with you

Damen couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

* * *

Damen was taken aback when Laurent arrived for their date. “You dyed your hair?”

“What?” Laurent asked, combing his fingers through brown locks. “You don’t like it?”

“I mean—sure.” Damen tried not to show his disappointment. “It looks good on you.” Damen was sure that objectively speaking it probably looked good, anyway. Besides that, it was Laurent’s hair and Damen would force himself to get over it.

Laurent laughed. “I can see Auguste’s plan worked out as he expected.”

“What?”

“Auguste still needed to prank both of us. Considering your last prank was dying his hair blue, he decided to kill one bird with two stones by turning me into a brunet.”

“I’m not that attached to your hair,” Damen protested. After all, he wasn’t going to admit how much he did miss Laurent’s blond hair. Especially not if it wasn’t even Laurent’s choice to dye his hair and therefore the odds were that he would most likely grow out his natural color again as soon as he could.

Laurent’s smile turned mischievous. “Then maybe you can prove to me that you’re still attracted to me, even without the blond hair.”

Damen didn’t need to be told twice. He tipped Laurent’s chin up and bent his own head down. As he captured Laurent’s lips in a kiss, he tangled his fingers in no-longer-blond hair. Laurent responded eagerly, and as he returned the kiss, he placed one of his hands on Damen’s ass. Damen kissed him harder.

When they pulled apart Laurent’s lips were swollen and he was breathing heavily. “I think,” he said, “that you might have convinced me. But you’re going to have to do that more often, if you want me to stay convinced.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Damen promised.

When they were walking to the restaurant, Damen couldn’t help but notice that people were staring after them. “Didn’t you once say that staring was rude?” he asked Laurent.

“Yes,” Laurent said. “Although, I suppose people may be forgiven if they have a good reason.”

“They don’t have a good reason!”

“That’s where your wrong, Damen,” Laurent said. “They have every reason to stare after you.”

“How are you so sure they’re looking at me and not you?”

“Because you’re the one with my handprint on your ass.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ I hope you enjoyed this.
> 
> Comments and kudos always brighten my day 💖


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